New county computer system
up and running    

[DEC. 27, 2004]  A comprehensive new computer system has the county fiscal year off to a good start. Faced with a plethora of choices, the county hired a local expert last spring to help sort out the county needs. Patrick Doolin of Integrity Data worked with each of the county departments and then contacted software and hardware vendors.

Doolin developed a detailed plan that called for a lot of new software and some new hardware and service/support contracts. The county accepted the plan in September. The new system was designed to get away from bugs in the old system, comply with current and future state requirements, and help keep better track of the county's financial condition.

One problem arose this month. Finance chairman Chuck Ruben handed the explanation over to Dewey Colter, county coordinator. While Colter was not yet working for the county when the computer system proposal was developed, he does have a good working understanding of the system and its use by the county departments.

A contract for an ongoing project was overlooked. REVES of Pekin supplied software that the assessor's office used to enter 12,600 property tax assessment records for the year 2003. Four systems are set up for its use in the assessor's office. The entry of the records was phase one of a two-phase project.

The software used is called Proval, for property evaluation. Manatron owns the software company. Two new contracts are needed with Manatron to complete and continue the project. A one-time fee contract, not to exceed $5,700, covers the cost of software support and training to finish the project. A second contract, not to exceed $3,446, covers the annual ongoing service fee. The total of $9,146 could be less if less support is needed.

The question the board had to address was: Who will cover the expense? Departments have line items to cover expenditures. But no one wants to be hit unexpectedly with an amount that large, Dale Voyles pointed out.

It was suggested that the information really offers benefits to several departments in the county, and it might be divided up to come from different accounts. It will also play a big role in the geographic information system, which consists of layers of information that is shared between departments and is associated with parcel mapping. There is a fund for GIS that could cover some of the expense.

County offices have been busy learning new software and transferring (migration) information. All seems to be going as it should. County board members received the first monthly reports generated by the new system this past month. And the first critical step relying on the new system, payroll for county employees, also made a first run.

Benefits of the new information system:

• Generates monthly reports from departments
• Allows for better tracking of finances
• Uses industry-standard databases
• Builds toward an integrated information sharing system (GIS), a future mandate
• Helps meets Illinois mandate to account for county assets
• Includes a more secure backup system performed frequently (less loss work that would need redoing)
• Gets away from bugs in old system

[Jan Youngquist]